In Desire, Dietrich played the jewel thief Madeleine de Beaupré, who steals a pearl necklace in Paris and plants it on an American auto mechanic, Tom Bradley, at the Spanish border. Bradley unwittingly brings the stolen goods through customs. To get the pearls back, Madeleine has to resort to all kinds of tricks, but love foils her plan when she falls for the American. The cunning jewel thief becomes an honest wife. Von Sternberg was sure to have sneered at this shallow story. Dietrich was not a sphinx, but a beautiful con artist whom love brings back onto the straight and narrow path of virtue. Desire is set in the glamorous world of luxury hotels, grand suites, and champagne glasses. Somehow one feels reminded of Dietrich’s old silent films, although these could not begin to compete with Desire in décor, spirit, and humor. Desire is light and witty entertainment—nice to watch, but lacking in depth. As von Sternberg had predicted, the critics were pleased to find that at long last, Dietrich had departed drastically from her usual style. Her costumes were no longer supercilious, erotic, and fantasy-filled, as they had been in von Sternberg’s films. Madeleine de Beaupré is an elegantly dressed woman who wears double-breasted jackets and white, medium-length skirts, yet she also dons extravagant hats and dazzling evening gowns.
The Wall Street Crash of 1929 had had a profound impact on the fashion industry. Couturiers clothed their famous clients free of charge in the hope of getting a publicity boost. These influential clients were not just aristocratic women and artists’ muses; most of them were actresses. In 1934, Dietrich became known as “the most imitated woman in the world.” Her function as a role model in the world of fashion has continued to this day. In 1935, she was one of the leading ladies in the film The Fashion Side of Hollywood. Now that she had been freed from von Sternberg’s influence, she no longer had to traipse about on railway platforms in exotic countries wearing evening gowns, but could also appear in fashionable contemporary sports blouses and blazers. Dietrich was highly critical of her old roles and von Sternberg’s way of portraying her at arm’s length. “Mr. von Sternberg never let me play love scenes—not ordinary ones, I mean, with hugging and all that, because he hates ordinary love scenes.”95 Since he was no longer there, she re-established a bond with her audiences, as evidenced in the photographs that were now circulated about her personal life.
One famous series of photographs taken by Eugene Richee in 1935 provides an uncommonly candid view of Marlene Dietrich. Dressed in a buttoned-up white blouse, white shorts, and white high-heeled shoes, she is stretched out on a lounge chair at the pool. Basking in the sun, her laugh showing her full red lips, she is the very picture of the attractive sporty woman. She had now become part of the Hollywood society that von Sternberg disdained. Dietrich no longer sat at home and cooked while Jo worked his way through stacks of screenplays; she put in a cheerful appearance at parties, ceremonies, and premieres. Photographers from the publicity department were always on hand. A letter from Willi Forst reveals that she started to drink at this time in order to fall asleep at night.96 Although she was relieved about not having to work with Jo anymore, once they separated, she realized the extent to which he had smoothed things over for her.
Dietrich never felt truly comfortable in Hollywood, but in public she was able to act as though there was nothing more beautiful than life in America. In this respect, she had a special position among the Germans. By the mid- and late 1930s, and into the 1940s, many German artists such as Thomas Mann, Vicki Baum, Arnold Schönberg, Peter Lorre, Franz Wachsmann, and Friedrich Hollaender were living in California, having sought refuge from Hitler. The Americans took note of the Germans’ presence in a friendly but indifferent manner, soon coming to refer to them as the “Beiunskis” because their demeanor, language, and art appeared to be guided by the phrase bei uns (“back where we come from”), which the Americans considered egocentric. These exiles were still quite proud of German tradition and German culture, and that was something that held little interest for the Americans, least of all for the Americans who wanted to live in Hollywood and earn their living by making films. This was a painful experience for many. Dietrich generally kept her distance from the tightly knit and narrow-minded exile circles in Hollywood, though from time to time, she dropped in on Salka Viertel’s salon in Santa Monica. She knew that cultural or political arrogance would not bolster her career. She was an outsider among the outsiders. Dietrich was a German Protestant artist who happened to wind up in the United States in order to work there. Assimilation was not a problem for her. It was her profession to be an actress, and she could be seen in both good and bad movies. She did not actually enjoy life in Los Angeles. Although she got offers to work in Germany, she felt that the only decent option was to reject them. She had no intention of working with the National Socialists, and so she stayed in the desert, where a person could not put down roots.
Los Angeles is a city that has always attracted foreigners. Every resident is an emigrant from somewhere in the world, yet the diversity of backgrounds is undercut by the monotonous sameness of the living conditions. Southern California, with its mild climate, wide horizon, and virtually boundless spaces, developed into a mecca for talented architects, urban planners, and designers who came to make Los Angeles a city of the future. The city was largely spared from the economic depression and was the place in which the American dream was still center stage, unfazed by the woes everywhere else. The sun shone for everyone. Here there was the money, the optimism, and the space to build a new world. Wilshire Boulevard, which extended from the Pacific Ocean into the city, created a link between nature and culture. The stars cruised from their beach houses to the film studios in their sleek automobiles. This was the modernity that made southern California the envy of the world. One needed a car and a telephone to survive in this city. Anyone who was not mobile did not belong.97 This was where the modern architectural designs were perfected for consumer-oriented modernity on the move. Supermarkets, motels, urban highways, gas stations, shopping centers, and drive-ins came to be defining features of the middle class throughout the world, with bank withdrawals, purchases, breakups, and hellos and goodbyes handled by rolling down car windows. Business and everyday transactions were conducted matter-of-factly and with impersonal friendliness. Everyone was on his or her own. Los Angeles was an avaricious city that was all about winners. The climate could drive you crazy, Hannah Arendt claimed, and even people who were reminded of Italy would be hard pressed to find the beautiful soul of this city. What mattered here were roles and earnings; everything else was relegated to the sidelines. Party lists were put together according to box-office success. All too easily, people were erased from these lists and waited for invitations in vain.
Eventually Dietrich came to accept the fact that she would have to remain in Hollywood and tried to make the best of it. She had been accustomed to spontaneous get-togethers back in Berlin, and she enjoyed going to the farmer’s market that opened in Hollywood in 1934. It was laid out in the American colonial style, like a farm in the Midwest. There were stands that sold fruit, meat, vegetables, and fish, along with concession booths that had their own tables and chairs. Something was always going on here—people were shopping, haggling, talking, gossiping, drinking, and eating. She liked this rather European type of public space. A person could drop in on a casual basis and meet up with people without advanced planning or invitations. Dietrich also greatly enjoyed riding out to an amusement park in Ocean Park, Santa Monica, perhaps because all the hustle and bustle reminded her of her life in Berlin.98
In November 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected the thirty-second president of the United States. His message of making the “forgotten man” the central theme of his campaign proved to be a winning strategy. For the past fifteen years, the country had undergone a process of profound change: The entry of the United States into World War I had made the country a world power overnight. For the first time in the history of this country, some two million young men were being sent to a continent far away to wage
war. After the dreadful years of the war and the Great Depression, Americans in the early 1930s were receptive to a politician who gave them cause for optimism. Roosevelt’s inaugural address found just the right words for the country’s state of mind. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” This statement was the new credo that Americans had been waiting for.
In contrast to the grim, inscrutable dictators in Europe and the Soviet Union, Roosevelt made no secret of his love of life. The dictators stayed in the background for quite some time. America was preoccupied with its own issues. Roosevelt won the presidential election of 1936 by an overwhelming majority. This success certainly rested in large measure on his promise not to lead the United States into war. Americans did not want to be embroiled in the conflicts of others yet again. This was especially true of people in the film industry in Hollywood, who wanted to earn their money in peace. Adolph Zukor, head of Paramount Pictures, declared: “I don’t think that Hollywood should deal with anything but entertainment. The newsreels take care of current events. To make films of political significance is a mistake. When they go to a theatre they want to forget.”99 In the 1930s, Hollywood was a world power. Nothing could make a bigger mockery of the dead seriousness of the dictators than the flippant refinement of Hollywood.
Dietrich chose to live in exile on her own. She remained in Hollywood. In letters, telephone calls, and telegrams, she kept up with what was going on in Berlin, Vienna, and Paris, but the extant correspondence barely mentioned the political situation. Personal issues and needs were front and center, as usual. She preferred to turn to her mother when she had medical questions. Dietrich suffered from the delusion that she was too fat, and her daughter too tall. There was no medical remedy for either of these conditions, but Josefine von Losch went ahead and asked Dr. Salomon in Berlin for advice, and telegraphed his reply to her daughter in Hollywood. Josefine was now so thrilled with her daughter’s acting prowess that she even copied out movie reviews and dispensed advice. She asked: “How satisfied are you with your staff? Are class distinctions emphasized or is everything peaceful?”100 Her tone was affectionate, and she often reminded Dietrich of little sayings and ditties from her childhood. Aunt Jolly, whom Josefine had never liked and who had now taken off with Ernst Udet, was making life difficult for her. She poured out her heart to her younger daughter about the hardships the merry widow was causing for her. Josefine devoted herself to firming up her daughter’s reputation in Germany. SEND ME CABLE PROVING THAT YOU ARE NOT COMMITTED MENTAL INSTITUTION AS TRIBUNE HEADLINE SCREAMS HAVE TO DENY IGNORE RUMORS WRONG ATTITUDE ABOUT TIME YOU TAKE MY ADVICE MUTTI.101 There is no mention of her wanting to leave Germany and come to America. Quite the opposite: Josefine hoped that her daughter would return to Europe after parting with von Sternberg, whom the family liked to call “Etoile.” In August 1935, she wrote her a letter in which she expressed regret about her daughter’s decision to remain in America. She thought it was terrible to live only for money, devoid of any joy and pleasure, the way Dietrich was living.
Everything that happened with Etoile, his hapless, divorced wife, everything? Everything took its toll in time and nerves. . . . Here it was said a thousand times that if Marlene Dietrich only didn’t have that bizarre, eccentric Etoile anymore. . . . You are in any case to be pitied from the bottom of my soul. ‘Landgraf werde hart.’ [Landgrave, grow hard.] I have a thousand worries that you will only be disappointed once again and you will eat up your disappointments slowly like tasty tidbits instead of getting a whiff of them beforehand and avoiding them in the first place. Poor, dear Lena; it’s too bad that there is an ocean between us.102
This letter reveals a side of Dietrich that she tried to conceal from the public. Her mother characterized her as someone with a penchant for suffering, someone who gobbles up disappointments like tasty tidbits and makes no attempt to steer clear of them. In November 1936, Dietrich was terrified at the thought that she might have gotten this penchant from her father. Her mother tried to calm her down and reassure her. She urged her daughter to leave aside her brooding once and for all and to enjoy life.
Rudolf Sieber continued to live in Paris, but visited his wife from time to time. On these occasions the whole family gathered in Coconut Grove. Dietrich, wearing a big hat, a well-chosen array of jewelry, and an elegant evening gown, was easy to identify as the most important person at the table. The others were mere accessories. Sieber looked startlingly young in his tuxedo and had his beautiful lover Tamara at his side, who followed everything that was going on around her with wide eyes. Maria sat between her parents. She was a bright, well-behaved girl, and spent a lot of evenings with her parents and their lovers in fine restaurants. To redress the gender imbalance, Fritz Lang or von Sternberg would be asked to join the group on occasion.
In January 1935, Dietrich welcomed Elisabeth Bergner to the United States. Catherine the Great and The Scarlet Empress coexisted peacefully. The friendship between Bergner and Dietrich served to boost the success of the films, then blossomed into a love affair. Dietrich was Bergner’s “sweet lover” and “Circe.” Bergner was spirited and tender, while Dietrich was cold and restrained. Their affair must have been passionate, though it was a well-kept secret. In April 1935, Bergner sent Dietrich this cable to Hollywood: I EAT YOU I SMELL YOU I GREASE YOU POWDER OIL RUB OINTMENT ON YOU AND WHAT I HAVE FORGOTTEN IS KNOWN TO ME ALONE LISL.103
After parting ways with von Sternberg, Dietrich proceeded to make money rather than art. The truly remarkable part of her next movie, The Garden of Allah, was the fact that she was able to earn two hundred thousand dollars and be filmed in Technicolor for the first time. The movie would not be a good one, but the large sum of money was enticing, and she had no real alternative. She devoted her energy not to her acting but to making herself look good. There was constant bickering about the lighting, the costumes, and her need for impeccable hairdos. Part of the movie was shot in the Yuma Desert, under trying conditions. Everyone was sweating, and toupées were slipping out of place, but Dietrich was “as dry as toast,” as her daughter wrote.104 The colors in the movie were beguiling, and the stills of Dietrich in a chiffon robe in the desert wind were seductive, but the movie itself was unbearable. “The great abstractions come whistling hoarsely out in Miss Dietrich’s stylized, weary, and monotonous whisper, among the hideous Technicolor flowers, the yellow cratered desert like Gruyère cheese, the beige faces.”105 No sooner was the shooting over in July 1936 than Dietrich packed her bags and traveled to London for her next film. This time, she had been loaned to Alexander Korda for a movie that would pay her $450,000, a romantic drama set in the period of the Russian Revolution and directed by Jacques Feyder. As with every other director after von Sternberg, she had difficulty working with Feyder. Dietrich staunchly defended her vision of how she needed to appear. When things got especially bad, she whispered into the microphone, “Jo, where are you?” Feyder complained that everything had to be tailor-made to her specifications. The only reality that she was prepared to accept was a beautiful image of herself. If she had got it into her head that she wanted to wear an evening gown while working in the fields, the screenplay would simply have to be changed. Knight Without Armour is better than its reputation. Dietrich played Countess Alexandra as a proud and courageous woman. One morning she wakes up and rings for her servants, but none of them responds. Wearing a white chiffon coat, she comes upon rebelling peasants and servants in the park, destroying paintings and furniture and looting the castle. In the course of the plot, she has to struggle along between the lines of the White and Red armies. Both the Whites and the Reds have power-hungry and brutal men, but there are also sensitive and smart ones. The film was not successful, but Dietrich’s fee was so substantial that its reception was not terribly important to her.
Her mother and sister kept her informed about her sustained popularity in Germany. The Scarlet Empress was the hit of the year in 1934 in Berlin; The Devil is a Woman was also shown and Desire ran in theaters unt
il mid-January 1939. Dietrich’s portrait was featured on magazine covers, and attempts to vilify her as a “non-German” failed at first.106 Even propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels preferred Dietrich’s femme fatale to the pasty faces of the new era. “Then with Hitler. ‘Shanghai Express.’ Marlene Dietrich is talented.”107 He regretted the fact that she was no longer working in Germany.108 Horst Alexander von der Heyde, the production manager at Tobis Cinema, flew to London in 1936 at Christmastime to meet with Dietrich. Her mother had assured him that she would see him. He did not come empty-handed; he brought her a Christmas tree from Berlin and two official letters. The Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda affirmed “that from this point on, publications by the German press that are detrimental to the reputation of Frau Dietrich will no longer be printed.”109 The propaganda ministry urged that negotiations with Dietrich be taken up for a movie in a German and English or French version. Dietrich was assured she would get every possible accommodation from the top German administrators for matters pertaining to direction, themes, screenplays, exchange rates, tax issues, acting fees, and personal amenities. Von der Heyde sat alone in his London hotel room under the Christmas tree from Berlin and waited in vain. Dietrich did not contact him.
Dietrich & Riefenstahl: Hollywood, Berlin, and a Century in Two Lives Page 24
